Around the World | 1912-1961

Founding of the African National Congress in Bloemfontein, South Africa

1914

June 28 Archduke Ferdinand of Austria assassinated. Start of WWI

August 15 Panama Canal opened for shipping

Edgar Rice Burroughs published Tarzan of the Apes, the first in a series

1915

British super liner Lusitania sunk by German submarine, loss of 1,153 lives

1916

Tanks used for the first time by British in the Battle of the Somme

Edward Sharpey Schafer, British psychologist, identified the site for a hypothetical hormone, he called insulin which controlled food metabolism

1917

Russia lost 5.5 million troops on eastern front against Germany - Lenin lead the Bolsheviks and established All Russian Congress of Soviets

1918

November 11 an armistice was signed ending the First World War

Oswald Spengler greatly impacted Germans with the publication of Decline of the West

Bela Bartok produced his brooding opera “Bluebeard’s Castle”

1919

World powers convene in Paris to sign the Treaty of Versailles

League of Nations formed to preserve peace

1920

Adolf Hitler became the 7th member of National Socialist German Workers Party, “Nazi Party”

X-ray method to detect finger prints developed in France

1921

Hermann Rorschach, psychologist, introduced the ink-blot tests

1922

Mussolini demanded a fascist government in Italy

Kemal Ataturk drove the Greeks from Turkey

Tomb of King Tutanhkhamun opened by Howard Carter

BCG tuberculosis vaccine introduced in France

1923

Attempted coup by Adolf Hitler sent him to jail for 5 years

September earthquake in Tokyo results is death of 150,000 people

1924

January 21 Lenin died; Joseph Stalin took control of the party

Founding of the Turkish Republic

1926

Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the television system

1930

Haile Selassie acceded to the thrown as Emperor of Abyssinia

Mahatma Gandhi began his campaign of civil disobedience

Karl Landsteiner won the Nobel Prize for discovering different types of human blood

1933

Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, invited to become Chancellor of Germany

1934

British historian, Arnold Toynbee, published Vol. I of A Study of History

Enrico Fermi discovered that a chain reaction of nuclear fission could be achieved with uranium

1936

German troops, violating the Treaty of Versalles, entered the demilitarized Rhineland

Germany, Italy and Japan signed mutual aid pact

1937

German dive-bombers destroyed a Basque city

Japan invaded China

Oxford University academic, J. R. R. Tolkein, published The Hobbit - first in great series

1938

German oppression of the Jews, “Kristalnacht” - shops attacked, 30,000 to concentration camps

1939

August: Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact signed

September 1:Germany invaded Poland

Sigmund Freud died in London

1940

German forces occupied Denmark

“Battle of Britain” was fought in the skies over southern England

1941

Germany occupied part of Russia; by September Leningrad was surrounded

1942

War in Europe and north Africa expands

1943

Manhattan Project achieve first operational nuclear reactor

First portable kidney dialysis machine

1944

June 6 D-Day: British, US, and Canadian forces landed on the beaches in Normandy

Age of Jets introduced with the RAF’s “Gloster Meteor” and Lufwaffe’s “Messerschmitt”

1945

April 21: Soviet troops entered Berlin

April 30: Hitler committed suicide

May 7: Germany finally capitulated

August 6:U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima

August 9: U.S. dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan, on the city of Nagasaki

August 15: Japan officially surrendered

Structure and function of the United Nations Organization agreed on

1949

October 7: The Chinese People’s Republic proclaimed

Establishment of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)

1950

Korean War started when communist North Korea invaded South Korea

India became an independent democratic republic under Jawaharlal Nehru

1951

Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb

Winston Churchill’ Conservatives returned to power in Britain

1952

Elizabeth II became queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Mau Mau started seven year anti-colonial campaign in Kenya

1953

The Korean War ended with an armistice signed in Panmunjom

Dag Hammarskjold became influential Secretary-General of the United Nation

Joseph Stalin died

1954

Gamal Abdel Nasser became Prime Minister of Egypt

Viet Minh defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu and Ho Chi Minh (in Hanoi) started the communist campaign against Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon

1955

Juan Peron, President of Argentina, forced into exile

Russian-born Vladimir Nabokov published his most famous novel, Lolita

1956

The Suez Canal was nationalized by Nasser. Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt

Hungary invaded by Soviet troops to crush anti-communist revolt

1957

Sputnik I launched by the Soviet Union

Boris Pasternak expressed his disappointment in the Russian Revolution in Dr Zhivago

1958

Charles de Gaulle, by public demand, became president of France

Fidel Castro began total civil war against the Batista regime

1959

Fidel Castro takes over regime in Cuba

Archbishop Makarios, exiled Cypriot leader, returned to Cyprus to head a provisional government

1960

South African police opened fire on black demonstrators in Sharpeville killing 67 people

Mrs. Bandaranaike of Ceylon, became the first female head of state in the modern world

1961

Bay of Pigs invasion failed attempting to oust Fidel Castro in Cuba

Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel in space, completing a single earth orbit aboard the capsule Vostock

Sources - Inter Alia:
(1.) Beazley, Mitchell (ed.): Time Lines: World History Year by Year since 1492. New York Crescent Books, 1991
(2.) Grun, Bernard: The Timetables of History. New York, Simon Schuster/Touchstone, 1991